How to sell free trade to green types

Environmentalists do not wtowtocop iraEU get on with free-traders. Suspicion is the norm, if not the outright hostility on display at the “Battle of Seattle” in 1999, which took place between riot police and activists outside a meeting of the World Trade Organisation (). When Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, boss of the , went to the climate summit in Glasgow two years ago she was the first head of the trade club to attend the portion reserved for ministers and senior officials. She is once again at this year’s summit, which began in Dubai on November 30th, to explain how trade can save the planet.Past animosity may help explain why green policies in many countries are at odds with the principles of free trade. “Buy American” provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act (), Joe Biden’s flagship green policy, lock out European firms. Tariffs on European steelmakers, introduced by Donald Trump on national-security grounds, have been suspended to give negotiators time to reach a deal on “sustainable steel”, but talks have stalled. America has ratcheted up tariffs on Chinese solar panels and battery-powered cars, and the has announced a counter-subsidy investigation into China’s carmakers.